After a not-quite-planned hiatus due to dealing with some offline personal matters, I'm going to start posting again. At least for a while. I still plan on transitioning away from Livejournal sometime in the near future, although my original plan of doing that over the summer is obviously shot. I've spent the last few months doing a lot of ( Read more... )

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  To kick off this week's Science Friday, say hello to the world's newest mammal, the olinguito (oh-lihn-GEE'-toe) . Well, technically, it's not new, but it had somehow escaped notice by scientists, as it lives in the upper reaches of trees in South America and comes out only at night. The National Zoo in Washington had one for a year back in the ( Read more... )

Well, another Friday has rolled around. For those of you who like themes, that means a collection of stories from the week about neat things going on in science and nature.

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  It seems like every week or two I come across another story about some bizarre invasive species. Today's installment: An infestation in parts of Texas, Florida, and the Gulf ( Read more... )

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  Fittingly, we start off Science Friday with an item from the "One Nation Under Surveillance" Department (Hi, NSA guys!!!). Time magazine has some of the key facts you need to know about Big Brother the federal government's massive telephone surveillance program.
  


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  Yet another invasive species problem in the Great Lakes region. Wildlife officials ( Read more... )

"Will Canine, Carl Jamilkoski, and Andy Sigler, all graduate students at ITP, created an open API platform that bypasses the nervous system and triggers muscle movement in a person hooked up with muscles sensors. They did so by hacking an “off-the-shelf” neuro stimulator unit and splitting its output so that it could be controlled with any ( Read more... )

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  Well, about those flying cars -- back to the drawing board.
  


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  Wired magazine has written an interesting profile of neuroscientist Henry Markam. If you haven't heard of Markam, he's one of those guys whose ideas about the future of technology make TED talks seem almost bland. Four years after he gave his own TED talk where, among other things, he ( Read more... )